Tehran says Israel's Syria airstrike won't go unanswered

Syria Says that Strike against Air Base Housing Iranian Forces was Carried Out by Israel

Deanna Wagner
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12 April, 2018, 00:51

This is likely because Israel has regularly attacked Syria for years now, without such a pretext.

Israel and Russian Federation have held routine coordination talks since Moscow started to send forces to fight along Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Army in the war-torn country.

Earlier in the day, Syria's SANA news agency reported that a missile strike targeted Syria's T-4 airbase in the east of Homs province. But he suggested that the airstrike came in response to a reported chemical attack that killed 40 people in Damascus.

A member of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's security cabinet and Israeli strategic affairs experts voiced doubt that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, embroiled in a protracted civil war, would risk direct conflict with Israel.

Israeli officials have repeatedly warned that Israel would not allow Iran to gain a military stronghold in Syria, Israel's northern neighbor. Military chief Gadi Eisenkot told reporters recently that "the final and desired situation is the removal of all Iranian-Shiite forces from Syria", the paper reported. "Israel is determined not to let them do that".

Tehran, he said, aimed to deter Israel from continuing to strike Iranian forces in Syria.

Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli military intelligence chief, wrote on Twitter that "the Iranians will probably respond to the strike attributed to Israel, even if not immediately". The Russians use the T-4 Air Base for their operations in Syria, although most of their activity there was reduced some months ago. Israel did not give any prior warning to Russian Federation.

"The State of Israel does not have a world power today that it can rely on to confront the Iranian expansion", analyst Alex Fishman wrote Tuesday in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.